Meet the Co-Hosts

We've decided to take the next couple of weeks off for the holidays, so please join us at Party in Your PJs on January 8, 2019 when we return. In the meantime, may your holidays be happy and the new year full of joy!

Lynda's Features!

This time of year can really be crunched for time - a few carefully selected meals made with your slow cooker or pressure cooker can really make life easier!

All links are pinned to a Party Board...you can follow the board on Pinterest...feel free to follow the board, there is lots of inspiration to be found there.

Ok...let's party!

Rules -Link to post, not your home page-Link to something YOU made, wrote or thought-No Etsy or Business Pages-Link Parties, Roundups and Giveaways welcome- Don't Link and Run! Please visit other links, make friends, learn something new, leave a comment.

Gramma. For me, just the word conjures up images of comforting old women and the enticing smell of something baking in the kitchen. My grandma always has a freezer in the basement full of cookies and other baked goods that she insists we bring home every time we visit. Holidays meant that her kitchen counters would be packed full of freshly made cookies, waiting to be enjoyed. And if you came over while she was baking, you got to help!

These were always fond memories for me, and while most of my dozen cousins can still enjoy going to Grandma's house, I now live 2,000 miles away (well, 1,965, but who's counting?). I have to say, especially around this time of year, I miss going to Grandma's.

I have found one way to help combat the lack of Grandma, and that is Gramma in a Box. Gramma in a Box is a monthly subscription box that delivers all the things you need to make up to 20 cookie and candy treats. This means that the cookies, frosting, sprinkles, and nearly all the little bits you need to make them are included, usually with a seasonally appropriate theme!

Gramma in a Box is $20/month if you are only ordering on a month to month basis, but offers a few ways to save some for a reoccurring delivery.

I was fortunate enough to receive the December box for review, and to make up a few delicious holiday treats with my kids.

The festively decorated box arrived and I have to admit, I loved the stickers that covered the outside of the package! It even contained a helpful “best by” sticker, as well as a reminder to put the box in the fridge if you aren't using it right away.

Inside the well packed box was a card outlining the projects, individual detailed project cards which include ingredients lists on the backs, a contents list, crushed peppermints, candy canes, three different kinds of sprinkles, three colors of frosting, melting chocolate, marshmallows, red hots, cornflakes, and cookies, as well as a couple sheets of parchment paper to help contain messes and paper cups for the wreath treats.

It was a lot of stuff tetrised neatly into the box, and I was actually impressed by how well it all fit. Nothing arrived crushed or crumpled.

The three treats to be made in this month's box were Hot Chocolate Treats, Holly Wreaths, and Winter Cookies.

The Hot Chocolate Treats and Holly Wreaths had you melt the chocolate wafers in a microwave in the directions, but I don't have a microwave and haven't for years, so I did it the old fashioned way and melted it in a double boiler rig using a small pot and a heat safe bowl on the stove top.

Being a grown woman who has lots of experience baking and creating in the kitchen, none of these projects took me more than 5 minutes after I got the chocolate melted.

Once you include children in the mix, as I did with my son for some of the cookies when he got home from school that day, it might have taken longer, but still a short enough time to hold their interest.

Even though the treats didn't take long to make (thanks to everything having been prepped), I still had lots of fun putting them together.

The cookies come pre-baked, making this a decoration project with no time needed to mix, bake and cool the cookies.

I actually appreciated that I didn't have to measure out ingredients or worry about baking the cookies, especially when kids are in the mix! It was really nice to have everything at hand; they really mean it when they say “Gramma does all the work. You have all the fun!”.

Not only were these goodies fun to make, they tasted great too! I had to have a plate of yummies after I finished making them, complete with some hot cocoa!

Gramma in a Box is really a fun little box that kids of all ages can enjoy making and eating! Gramma in a Box is letting us give away a January box to one of our readers in the US - it goes out on Jan 3rd, just in time to be waiting for you on that inevitable first snow day after the kids go back to school.

One winner in the US will win the January Gramma in a Box (value $20.00).

This Giveaway ends at just before midnight ET December 30, 2018

To enter the giveaway, please leave a comment in this entry as instructed by the Giveaway Tools Entry Form below. This will open up additional optional entries to increase your odds of winning. (If you don't leave a comment, any additional entries will be void.)

The winner will be notified by email 24 to 48 hours after the end of the giveaway by email. In order to claim the giveaway prize, the winner will need to respond within 24 hours of notification, or an alternate winner will be selected.Good luck!

Thursday, December 13, 2018

If you've ever eaten with chopsticks, you know that you have to have somewhere to rest them between courses or in lulls of eating, especially if you're someone like me, who likes to talk with their hands, and you don't want to be waving around your utensils in conversation.

The traditional answer is chopstick rests, but unfortunately, not everyone has them and sometimes there just isn't enough room to rest them on the side of your plate. When this happens, you usually have to find a napkin or something as a buffer between your chopsticks and the table to keep things sanitary.

Gravity Chopsticks is a company that seeks to fix this predicament. With their innovative chopstick design, the eating tips of the chopsticks are suspended in the air when they are laid down on the table.

These sticks are made of a BPA free thermoplastic which means that they are both dishwasher safe and heat resistant for cooking. They are also slightly texturized, which helps with getting a good grip.

Currently, they come in two different colors: black, which start at $5.95, and a limited edition red, which starts at $7.95. They also offer two different case options for storing and carrying around the chopsticks: black velvet sleeves for $3.00 and a hard carry case for $29.95. The hard carry case is currently out of stock at the time of writing.

I was able to try out four pairs of Gravity Chopsticks, two black and two limited edition red. I really appreciated the texture on them, as I find that some of the chopsticks that I've used before were simply too slippery to really use.

The squared design of the chopsticks was also really nice, because that meant that they didn't just go rolling off the table when they were set down.

While most chopsticks have a continual taper along the entire stick, these achieve their suspension by having an abrupt change of width in the middle of the chopstick. This didn't present any problems for the Mister or a couple of friends who used them, but for me, I had a slight learning curve because that abrupt change is exactly where I usually hold my chopsticks.

It didn't take long though, and I was holding them a bit further back and using them with no problem.

The clearance between chopstick and surface is only a couple of millimeters, so you do have to make sure there are no food particles or saucy goodness on your sticks before setting them down, or you will more than likely have contact with the surface of the table.

While I was able to use the chopsticks to saute some onions and garlic for my ramen, I was not able to test out how well they would handle being put through a dishwasher because my dishwasher's utensil basket's grid is too big, and the sticks fall right through.

I can't see how they would not hold up to it machine washing, though, as they did a great job when I cooked with them on the stovetop.

I love these chopsticks, and I find myself reaching for them over my old sticks constantly. I keep a set in my lunchbox for work and the Mister has even requested a pair to take with him to Korea! Gravity Chopsticks have a simple, elegant design that works!